40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 776 64. Regaining Hope (Twenty-one)

Luft Huron had mixed feelings.

This was strange because he was a person who hardly showed any emotions on a daily basis, and this had been evident since his rookie days.

When the instructors at the training camp deliberately picked on him for some trivial matters, Huron did not express any opinions. He also took the instructors' insults, beatings, and even the praises that turned anger into joy.

Most of the new recruits of his time jokingly called him "Stone Statue" because of this incident. Sadly, among these people who gradually became brothers with him, only a small number of them completed the training like Huron and became the reservists of the Star Claws.

However, in the war that soon followed, these people were reduced by about two-thirds again. In the end, there were only three people who knew the name of the statue and were still alive in the world, except Huron himself. They all served as officers in the Claws of the Star.

The friendship they had built up over time and through the test of iron and fire had deepened, as had their mutual understanding. But even so, the three of them were often surprised to find that Luft Huron was clearly different from them.
The trait that was evident in his rookie days has transformed into an indestructible external feature, like the blade of his sword or the emblem in the center of his shield, which is bound to be the first thing that everyone will notice.

In short, outside of the sacred mission he was given, between his home world, his mothership, and his brothers where he could live in peace, Huron was a lifeless man.

Only when he threw himself into the war did he look like a living person.

The last time he had such mixed feelings was when he fought alongside the Nightborne.
At that time, he and his team were ordered by their superiors to go to a hot and narrow metal processing factory. According to subsequent investigations, all the workers here had actually been corrupted or replaced. But for the Star Claw team at that time, they knew nothing about this.

All they knew was that the factory, like much of that world, had been tainted by the Chaos Enemy, and that their mission was to cleanse it.
Therefore, when the person in charge of connecting with them suddenly turned into a dazzling ball of fire, Huron was the only one among the ten Star Claws present who reacted.

This helped him to roll over and dodge the explosion that carried the evil power of the warp, and also allowed him to stand up immediately and kill with precise point-shooting a group of cultists who dared to rush into the ruins to strangle them immediately after the explosion.

Then came the twelve nightmarish hours.

The factory manager's self-explosion killed three Star Claws and seriously injured two others, almost losing their ability to fight. After checking the situation, Huron immediately ordered a retreat and began to call the regiment, but the communication had been blocked.

The ubiquitous eerie whispers replaced the cold and reliable communication codes, echoing in their ears and occupying every communication channel that could be searched.

Huron can still remember how he felt at the time - his teeth were chattering and he almost lost control of himself because of extreme anger.
Fortunately, he was the son of Robert Guilliman, and his rationality always prevailed. After a brief observation of the terrain, he decided to lead the wounded into the depths of the factory.

As long as the regiment found that they did not make the routine communication every two hours, support would immediately arrive on the gunboat. With the cover of air firepower, it would not be difficult to kill all the cultists in the factory.

However, Huron, who was still a rookie at the time, miscalculated one thing.

He decided to take refuge in the factory because the armor's auspicious instrument detected that there were not many people in the depths of the factory. However, he forgot to think about why this group of cultists who had already become powerful would voluntarily withdraw from the depths of the territory they completely controlled.

There, he and his brothers saw the most evil scene they had ever seen.
Thinking of this, Luft Huron's face twitched involuntarily.

For some reason, this small action did not escape the eyes of the commissioner sitting opposite him. Although he was not looking at him and was staring intently out the window, he still noticed and pointed it out.

"Are you having any bad memories, Lieutenant Huron?"

".Yes." Star Claw decided to tell the truth. He saw no need to hide the truth.

The commissioner turned around, looked at him with the same dark eyes as Yago Sevitarion, and nodded.

"I can tell you don't want to talk." He gestured considerately.

Huron was silent for a few seconds, and the underground cave in his memory appeared before his eyes again.

Thousands of men and women without clothes and skin, tangled together, flesh peeled off and glued together, hundreds of babies hung upside down by their necks with umbilical cords and their swollen eyes.
Thinking of these things made him take a deep breath and forced him to quickly change the subject.

"Lord Yago Servitarion told me about you."

The Commissioner seemed to smile, and this smile on his face, as pale as a tombstone, briefly restored him to human form, making him the protagonist of a gloomy oil painting.

Despite this, his voice was soft, almost gentle.

"He probably didn't say anything good about me, otherwise you wouldn't be so embarrassed to say it. In addition, I guess this conversation between you must have taken place in a very embarrassing situation? Otherwise, he wouldn't have used me as a shield."

Huron was silent for a few seconds, then nodded heavily and spoke in a muffled voice.

"He rushed in - smashed through the ceiling of that underground cave, rushed in front of us, and in two minutes and thirty-two seconds killed a demon that was summoned into the world by a very blasphemous ritual."

"and then?"

"The Nightborne arrived too, and he called us fools," Huron deadpanned. "He also said that if we wanted to die, we could just find a hard place on our own ship and crash into it."

The commissioner blinked, his expression didn't change much, but his hands on his knees suddenly clasped together.

"I apologize for him," he said very softly.

Huron pretended not to hear this and just went on talking.

"But we didn't really care about it. We had been fighting for twelve hours and had already run out of ammunition and food. To be honest, after seeing strong support, who could be angry about these words that were even less vulgar than the insults from the instructors in the training camp?"

"Besides, the matter is not over yet. The blasphemous evil force in the air has not dissipated yet. Even one of my dying brothers could sense it. When the Nightborne doctors came to treat him, he told me about it."

"He said that even though the thing was dead, he didn't think it was over. He only had time to say this before the medical officers anesthetized him. But I know what else he wanted to say - there were ten people in my team, and after those twelve hours, there were only three of us left."

"This is a huge shame and sorrow. As the only ones left, we must do something to wash away this disgrace. So I and another brother who was still able to fight went to find Lord Yago Sevitarion, hoping that he would allow us to temporarily join the ranks of the Nightborne." The commissioner listened silently - from his expression, he probably had foreseen what would happen next.

Huron suddenly clenched his teeth.

“Of course, he refused.”

The transporter's engine made a dull sound, and it was pitch black outside the window, with occasional lights. From the cockpit, which was only separated by a wall, came the sound of constant communication, one after another, without interruption, most of which were new troops reporting their numbers.

Yes, a few hours ago, this convoy that was waiting to die in a doomed pocket dimension has now become a force that cannot be underestimated.

They traveled through seventy-two pocket dimensions and gathered all the survivors they met.
And the credit cannot be attributed entirely to the commissioner who suddenly appeared, although it is true that he used some means to obtain the central approval of the Undead Dynasty world called Solmus, thus opening up the shuttle channel between dimensions.

However, the efforts of a certain Necron traitor who was eager to prove himself were equally important.
"What did he say?" asked the Commissioner.

"He spent three minutes explaining to us in detail his view of the matter, which, in short, he thought we were not only stupid, so I"

Huron paused, his voice gradually becoming deeper.

".I threatened him."

The commissioner suddenly raised his eyebrows, and suddenly understood why this adjutant dared to spend a considerable amount of space in a report that would be on Robert Guilliman's desk to curse Yago Sevitarion by name.

He even dares to threaten me in person, so what does a few curses mean?

He suppressed his smile, tried his best to put on an expressionless face, and asked, "Threat? How did you do that?"

".I told him that I had noticed something strange about him while fighting the demon. I had heard of his name, but I felt that even a warrior as powerful as him could not crush a pleasure-loving demon with pure strength and speed in close combat."

"So I said, I hope he and I can both take a step back. I won't report this matter to the Chapter, the Primarch, or even the Inquisition according to the rules and regulations, and he will take us with him. As long as he agrees, then we will do whatever he asks us to do in the next battle, even if it means dying."

Huron sat in his seat with his head raised, his expression gradually becoming strange and complicated, just like a philosophy student who was thinking about the most confusing philosophical problem he had ever encountered in his life.

"Then he smiled." Star Claw said at a loss. "Then he agreed to my proposal. After the matter was settled, he even came to see me."

"He said that I should abide by the rules and regulations. Behind every seemingly old-fashioned rule are the blood and tears of countless people, so I should honestly write down everything I saw in the report."

"I refused, after all, we had a deal. As a result, he beat me out of my tent in our camp and beat me black and blue in front of our chapter leader."

"The Chapter Master asked him why he did this, and he said it was because the young Battle-Brother was a fool."

"I spent two days healing my broken bones, and then I saw him again. This time he came with wine and apologized to me, and then he mentioned you."

Khalil sighed softly, but did not ask any more questions. Instead, he raised his hand and temporarily stopped the conversation.

He had already guessed why the First Son of the Night mentioned him - it was just to give Rudolf Huron an excuse.

There was no way Sevatar would reveal any truth, so he probably just made up a story, and he didn't want to hear it.

Moreover, the time for quiet chats during leisure time is gone.

The transporter stopped with a shudder. Outside the metal plate, the cold wind was howling.

Khalil reached out to unfasten the four-point safety buckle, and with a flick of his right hand, a knife was grasped in his hand. The communication sound from the cockpit was still incessant, but it had changed from constant number reports to enemy warnings.
The key word is Eldar.

Khalil stepped out of the carriage, raised his head, and caught a glimpse of a large group of Dark Eldar-specific vehicles in the dim sky, which could only be described as "sharp".

He looked back at the rear of the convoy. The long torrent of metal was gradually falling silent. The Astartes had already dispersed and were waiting silently. The elite and combat-hardened auxiliary troops also raised their guns. All those who could fight were ready - and Khalil's gaze hardly lingered on them.

His eyes fell on the center of the convoy, where there was an exceptionally large armored vehicle.

A team of mechanical priests were sitting inside, including the sage named Kaplan. The Crusader Army surrounded the vehicle tightly, and various armed mechanical servants formed an extremely tight firepower position along it in just over ten seconds.

All of this can be attributed to a huge but incomplete device inside the armored vehicle - it was found in a dimension that the convoy passed through along the way. According to the decryption of the Mechanicus, it was confirmed to be a lost standard STC manufacturing template, but it was not used to manufacture any weapons or machinery.

Instead, it can only be used to make one drug.

Panacea.

A long horn sounded in the sky, followed by a strange and shrill laugh. The entire conspiracy group collected by Trazyn was looking at the group of prey they had chosen with joy.
They know nothing about them and just decide to follow tradition and start a brutal hunt.

Khalil decided to call it quits.

In front of Luft Huron, he walked into the darkness. The adjutant of Star Claw was silent for a long time, then raised his hand and rubbed his brow, and the words of Yago Sevitarion came to his mind.

".I learned almost all of these skills from my instructor. Believe it or not, kid."

(End of this chapter)